Chapter 1.1
“Do you have any idea how much the commission you blew was worth? Our guild even has to pay compensation for the damages!”
The man who had been shouting raised his hand, unable to contain his anger.
Slap!
The face of the woman who was on her knees, Christine, turned around the moment the sound of air being split apart echoed through the basement.
As soon as she was slapped, the taste of blood spread in her mouth and her eardrum stung as if it had been ruptured. Her vision was blurred with tears because of the physiological pain.
Her heart was beating like crazy, sensing the danger from the moment the man in front of her, Guild Master Duff, came to see her after she failed her commission.
Nevertheless, Christine spat the blood on the floor and didn’t say a word. In fact, she was close to having no strength left to resist.
Duff’s eyes turned red at her actions, which seemed as if she were saying that she had done nothing wrong.
“I treated you with affection because you’re pretty, I even took care of your useless, sick mother, and this is how you repay me?”
“…”
Duff continued to swear at her for a long time, his anger not subsiding.
‘How can I be treated like this just because I failed a commission once?’ Christine thought, lowering her cold gaze.
Duff shouldn’t have treated her like this.
She had lived as an elite guild member of the Golden Horseshoe Guild all her life. She lost her father, who was also a member of the guild, when she was twelve, and her mother, who was already in poor health, became increasingly ill.
Since then, she had been enslaved for seventeen years, but not because she didn’t have the strength to run away from the guild.
As descendants of mages, both her mother and herself had a curse that periodically caused problems with their mana, causing them to throw up blood and sustain internal injuries.
And, coincidentally, Guild Master Duff had a jewel that alleviated the mother and daughter’s pain. In exchange for using the jewel, he received 5 gold a month, 10 gold for the two of them.
Considering that the salary of an ordinary tavern employee was 1 gold, and that the amount Christine received from handling difficult requests in rough terrain for a month was 3 gold, it was an excessive amount.
Even more so, because the accommodation fee, mission brokerage fee, and the care fee for her mother, who had limited mobility, had to be paid separately to the guild.
No matter how hard Christine worked alone, their debts would only accumulate unless the mother and daughter lifted the curse.
‘Besides… Even if I use Duff’s jewel, the curse itself won’t be lifted.’
Duff’s jewel definitely acted like a painkiller and eased the pain of the mother and daughter. When she faced the jewel up close, the pain subsided for a few days.
However, because it did not affect the curse itself, the internal damage caused by the curse gradually piled up in Christine and her mother’s bodies.
She had spent so much money believing that the power of the jewel would heal her curse one day, and it was all in vain.
As evidence of that, Christine’s bedridden mother was recently given two weeks at most to live.
It was not surprising, since it had been quite some time since she had been vomiting blood and was unable to move, but when Christine heard the news, she cried for several hours.
A life of being exploited by the Golden Horseshoe Guild because of a curse and ultimately losing their lives?
It was unfair to live a life without freedom, but Duff was acting like he was going to kill her for failing a request only once.
So, for a split second, Christine had a thought she had never had before.
‘Should I leave?’
It didn’t seem like a bad idea for her and her mother to go on a trip and spend their remaining free time together.
Yeah… The sea. She wanted to see the sea that she and her mother were supposed to go see together one day, when they were completely healed from the curse.
If she was only being exploited by the man in front of her anyway, she wanted to know what freedom was at least once.
“Christine, what on earth does our guild mean to you? What on earth makes you think you can do something that would ruin the guild’s reputation?”
“…”
Christine made up her mind and raised her head.
Duff’s question was something she had always asked herself. Now that she no longer had the will to live, she was able to put that thought out of her mouth. No, she wanted to say it even if she had squeezed out the last of her strength.
“Asshole.”
“What?”
“You’re an asshole I wouldn’t want even if you were given for free. That’s what you are to me, Duff.”
“Ha…”
“And the Golden Horseshoe Guild are a bunch of incompetent beggars who took my hard-earned money and shared it.”
“…”
“If you didn’t have a jewel that eased the pain of the curse, I would have already left this lousy guild.”
After spitting out those words, Christine’s shoulders trembled without her realizing it. She burst into laughter, but tears also flowed out.
She felt relieved when she brought out the words she had kept inside for seventeen years, since she had lost her father when she was twelve.
And she felt bad that she could say this only after completely giving up on breaking the curse and deciding to die.
“You crazy…”
Duff trembled as if he couldn’t bear the humiliation.
But he couldn’t touch Christine any further than that.
As Christine had said, she was the one who earned most of the Golden Horseshoe Guild’s fees.
“… Just so you know, I won’t be lending the necklace to you or your mother this week.”
Again, Duff threatened her mother and her own life before leaving.
That was why Christine was able to strengthen her final resolve even more.
YOU ARE READING
Beast in the Woods, Deep in the Night
Romance{ +18} Christine was an elite member of a guild who had excellent commissioning skills, but she couldn't break the curse that caused abnormalities in her body. She suffered her whole life and was only exploited by the guild she worked for. She infi...
